Jump to content

Python Programming/CGI interface

From Wikibooks, open books for an open world


The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) allows to execute some Python programs on an HTTP server.

Installation

[edit | edit source]

By default, open a .py file in HTTP returns its content. In order to make the server compile and execute the source code, it must be placed in a directory including an .htaccess file, with the lines[1]:

AddHandler cgi-script .py Options +ExecCGI 

Attention: on the Unix-like servers the files aren't executable by default, so this must be set with the command: chmod +x *.py.

Examples

[edit | edit source]

The module cgitb is used for debugging:

#!C:\Program Files (x86)\Python\python.exe# -*- coding: UTF-8 -*-print"Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8\n\n"print"<html><head><title>Local directory</title></head><body>"importcgitbcgitb.enable()importosprint"The CGI file is located into:"printos.path.dirname(__file__)print"</body></html>"

The usage of a form needs an import cgi[2].

For a MySQL database, its import MySQLdb[3].

The following file is called CGI_MySQL.py, and uses the both modules:

#!C:\Program Files (x86)\Python\python.exe# -*- coding: UTF-8 -*-print"Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8\n\n"print"<html><head><title>DB CGI</title></head><body>"print"<h1>MySQL extraction</h1>"print"<ul>"importcgitbcgitb.enable()importcgi,MySQLdbform=cgi.FieldStorage()ifform.getvalue('name')==None:print"<h2>Research a name</h2>"print''' <form action="CGI_MySQL.py" method="post"> <input type="text" name="name" /> <input type="submit"></form> '''else:print"<h2>Result</h2>"print"List for "+form.getvalue('name')+" :"connection=MySQLdb.connect(user='login1',passwd='passwd1',db='base1')cursor=connection.cursor()cursor.execute("SELECT page_title FROM page WHERE name ='"+form.getvalue('name')+"'")forrowincursor.fetchall():print"<li>%s</li>"%row[0]connection.close()print"</ul>"print"</body></html>"

References

[edit | edit source]
  1. "HOWTO Use Python in the web".
  2. http://fr.openclassrooms.com/informatique/cours/apercu-de-la-cgi-avec-python
  3. https://pypi.python.org/pypi/MySQL-python/1.2.5
close